The team members hunt for the gunman who shot Ed and learn that the shooter is linked to a drug lord. Meanwhile, Ed undergoes surgery; and his wife experiences complications while delivering their baby.

Misha Davenport

Though the characters on this show, premiering Friday on CBS, are relatable and watchable, the slow pace might prove to be too much of a cultural divide for an American audience used to the quick cuts and immediate resolve seen on American cop shows.

Robert Lloyd

It has an appealing modesty that survives its bouts of aesthetic overexcitement--the occasionally lurching camera, hammering soundtrack, the sentimental pop song laid over the last couple of minutes as the principals silently end a long, hard day.

Glenn Garvin

Cynthia Fuchs

Flashpoint works through the distress and damage it lays out here, it gets points for beginning with the difficulty, not with the triumph. Now, if it can just figure a way beyond the scary perp clichés.

Verne Gay

Matthew Gilbert

It goes through the motions quite competently and respectably. But it is nonetheless merely re-creating crime-series moves we've all seen many times before, with only the faintest afterimage of originality.

Linda Stasi

The best part of this show is the acting, which is generally excellent - particularly that of Hugh Dillon as Ed Lane, the conscience-riddled sharpshooter. Too bad the writing isn't as on-target as Lane's high-powered automatic.

Ginia Bellafante

Brian Lowry

It's understandable why CBS would take its own low-risk shot with "Flashpoint" as summer filler. Yet as viewing experiences go, the series itself possesses so little flash, finally, that it's difficult to see the point.

Alan Sepinwall

The Flashpoint pilot is competent, but very retro (there's an extended sequence of the team driving to a crisis point with their sirens blaring, the sort of thing that went out 15 years ago) and fairly dull.

If it had something truly new or provocative to say about such matters, the essential redundancy of Flashpoint could be overlooked--but it doesn't, and so it can't. These good guys are too good for their own good. And ours.